Geoffrey Jenkins: A Cleft Of Stars

I remember trying to concentrate on Nadine's face when she started to speak. Her words were drowned by a roar in my I clawed at the trestle table to save myself, but my hands seemed to have no power. I slid to the ground.

They told me at the hospital that my delirium lasted five days while the fever ran its course. Each time I rose to semiconsciousness I fought to catch Nadine's words. My fogged brain conjured her up clothed in gold, a priestess sacrificing before an altar shaped like The Hill; I saw her kneeling and begged her to lift her eyes to mine but she would not; I saw her drop the priestess's robe and stand naked except for golden points like the statuette's at her breasts and navel. She came towards me..

I broke through to consciousness in a torrent of sweat. Nadine was sitting by my bed in the white ward.

It is easy to fall in love after a war which has torn apart the lives of half the world and one comes ydung and new to the task of remaking it. The Hill and its age-old mystery lay close to both our hearts. My own work — the study of the art of a people who left to posterity their genius in the form of beautifully engraved boulders with wild animal designs?as related.

We fell in love.

We both sensed rather than felt the first tug of the tide that day in the little hospital at Messina. She told me how my sudden collapse had caused consternation among the expedition. It had been impossible to consider driving me through the bush tracks in the dark. Next morning, still delirious, I'd been taken by two of the party by Land-Rover to the hospital. Nadine sat by the bed and eyed me thoughtfully.

'That was the moment when all our troubles began.'

My brain felt as agile as a hipped dinosaur. I hadn't begun to consider how she herself came to be at the town instead of The Hill. I experienced a sense of warm elation that she was there, and it was enough at that stage.

She smiled. 'You've been missing from the world for nearly a week. It didn't stop because of that, you know.'

I did not want to be lumped into the general category of troubles. Moreover, I was limp and edgy._ 'One can't help contracting malaria either.'

'Well, we can be sure that it wasn't visited upon you.'

'What on earth do you mean?'

Her eyes were very clear and a little puzzled.

'All our other problems — well, we weren't so sure about them.'

I was not responding properly. My soggy brain took in the fact that she wasn't wearing bush clothes, which meant she must have stayed in town overnight and changed specially to come to visit me. The cool white cotton dress enhanced her dark hair.

'Guy, do you believe what they say about The Hill?' she went on before I could answer.

My fever days had been too blanked with superheated images to want any more gropings now that I was conscious again. It was good to see her next to me, warm and real. Other things didn't seem important.

The taboo, I suppose?'

'Ye. . es. When you live, eat and sleep right next to The Hill-no, I can't really explain what I mean. It's more a feeling than anything else. It's not simply an ordinary hill. I'm sorry I'm putting it badly but … but there's something there. Something.'

'When I made the preliminary reconnaissance ahead of the expedition itself I couldn't raise help within thirty miles once the natives heard we were bound for The I replied. 'As far as I am concerned there's nothing to it. You get these extraordinary psychological upsurges of the primitive all over Africa. For instance, there's a tribe living near this very town which claims you can rid yourself of a headache merely by walking along a path the witch doctor indicates and rubbing it off on the bushes.'

She blurted out unexpectedly as if she could not keep back the news any longer. 'We've abandoned the expedition.'

'What!'

I felt acutely let down in a double sense. Oddly, the more telling reason was that I had imagined all along that she had taken the trouble to make the rough trip from The Hill specially to see me. Her real motive seemed much more matter-of-fact.

'Don't tell me your statuette is an image of the powers of darkness and that it's brought down a curse on the expedition like that of Tutankhamen!'

She flushed slightly. 'Let me tell you. When the fuss of getting you away safely to hospital was over we set to work again. But we found we couldn't. All the survey pegs marking the trenches had been uprooted and scattered about.'

'Probably baboons,' I asserted. 'Gardner had the same problem in '36. They're very inquisitive creatures and The Hill swarms with them. They've got a big colony up near the spring on the summit. They won't meddle with pegs if you paint 'em with pitch, however. The heat keeps it sticky and oats their paws, which they hate. I put a drum of it among the stores for that very purpose.'

'We did exactly that,' Nadine answered steadily. 'Next day the same thing happened. Everything was higgledy-piggledy, an awful mess. It took us half a day simply to re-mark the digging sites. Then the following day: repeat performance.'

'If The Hill's taboo is no more sinister than a baboon's curiosity, you've nothing to fear.'

The convincing way you say that indicates how deeply you believe it, Guy. I think I share your views.'

The ensuing pause in our conversation was full of undercurrents.

'Well,' I ventured a little uncertainly under her steady gaze,

'You tell me, then. You made the big discovery. Maybe there's even another gold hoard there.'

She shook her head and the thick hair fell halfway across her cheek. I resented the hairdresser's gloss that had replaced the dust at The Hill. It affected me as a further sense of sellout. 'I'm not a treasure-seeker. Guy, can't you see what I'm trying to tell you? The Hill. .'

I was too unhappy about the expedition's ending, perhaps still too ill to appreciate that her emotions were ahead of her words.

Again she gave me a long considering look. Then she resumed matter-of-factly. 'The first night after you'd gone the two remaining Land-Rovers were parked against the cliff face between the two main digging sites. We'd put them there during the day for the sake of the shade. About midnight we were all awakened by a tremendous crash. A huge boulder had fallen off The Hill on top of them.'

'It happens all the time,' I replied a little impatiently. 'Sandstone decays in the summer and in winter when it cools chunks crumble and fall off. That's what happened in a big way when the secret stairway was formed long ago.'

'I know, I know! Every one of the strange happenings I'm about to tell you about has a double interpretation. First, then, the jeeps were a write-off. Dr Drummond was furious-and disturbed too. Next morning he and Jock Stewart decided to climb to the summit via the secret "stairway" to see if they could spot what had caused the boulder to break away. It would have been crazy to have attempted to climb in the dark immediately after the incident. Since the two vehicles were paid for by public subscription there had to be some sort of acceptable explanation of how all that money came to be lost. Dr Drummond was also concerned about something else on the table top. . he hinted at a possible new site but gave no details.

'Jock told us afterwards that about two-thirds of the way up the "stairway" the professor had been leading. He was perhaps 150 feet from the bottom. You haven't been up yet, have you Guy? Let me explain: the passageway narrows and there's a nasty corner you have to squeeze round. The person below loses sight of anyone ahead. The Prof was negotiating this tricky section and was out of Jock's view. Suddenly Jock heard a choking sound. He went up as fast as he could and found Dr Drummond hanging from a wire noose round his neck. Luckily he'd thrown up his arm as he fell. That saved him and stopped the slipknot from strangling him. The wire was six feet long — the same as a gallows drop — and it was brand-new.